Hogarth fiction

By an author with a sharp ear, keen eye, and mordant wit. . .

Darkly comic, gently compassionate examinations of 1950s Middle America, Catholic style. As the village of Sherwood (where some stories take place in a vaguely pinpointed but accurately mapped terrain) becomes swallowed up into Minneapolis suburbia, as the Church begins to find its parishioners assimilating beyond the reach of vestibule religious tracts into the Welcome Wagon invitations of the middle class tract, Powers shifts accordingly... This follow-up [to "The Prince of Darkness and Other Stories"] presents nine investigations of Catholic life. Most are clerical, and those that feature the laity tend to wear the trappings of their faith less obviously, as fits the subject matter. But each one peers into the dilemmas of compromise, how one must balance what's rendered to God with what's given to Caesar. --John L. Murphy at Amazon.com.

This is the haunting story of a young girl in flight from her impoverished childhood. To ten year old Sonia Marburg, the gold dome of Boston's State House shines as a promise of escape from the burden of substituting for a deranged mother as a chambermaid in an aging hotel across the bay. Her father's desertion serves to trigger her introduction to Beacon Hill, and her coming to terms with the healing of an empty decadent society provides a compassionate unfolding of a human pilgrimage and a brilliant satire of modern life.

Though best known for the lighthearted look at family life and sisterly relationships in Little Women, some of Louisa May Alcott's work touched on more socially significant themes. Behind a Mask, Or a Woman's Power is one of several works that Alcott penned under a pseudonym. Perhaps freed by the anonymity this guise granted, she delves deeply into issues of gender, family, and social class in this story that focuses on the relationship between a governess and the family she works for.